According to to unpublished notes of A. C. de la Mare at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, perhaps made for a member of the Piccolomini family: its arms, mainly effaced (f.3).Written by Johannes Mervelt of Westphalia in 1460: colophon, 'Cui peremne decus maneat Westphallia cunctis / Insignita bonis: patria est mihi grata Ioanni / Mervelt quem lector celeri scripsisse tene[n]to / Hunc Librum digito, fessa quiesce manus. Anno domini Mo CCCCoLXo VIIo Novembris. Pontius Pius II ppe secundi. Anno eius tertio' (f. 210v); and the name 'Mervelt' inscribed in hard point (f. 127).John Gibson (fl. 1720-1726), dealer; sold to Edward Harley on 13 February 1723/4 (see Diary 1966; Wright 1972).The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (b. 1661, d. 1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (b. 1689, d. 1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts, inscribed as usual by their librarian, Humfrey Wanley ‘13 die Februarij, A.D. 1723/4’ (f. 1). Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (b. 1694, d. 1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (b. 1715, d. 1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 (a fraction of their contemporary value) under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.

Notes

ff. 1-2 are parchment leaves. Table of Contents in humanistic cursive (ff. 1v-2).Vertical catchwords with penwork decoration. Ruled in hardpoint.The decoration is in the style of Andrea di Firenze and the manuscript was possibly made for a member of the Piccolomini family according to to unpublished notes of A. C. de la Mare at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Select bibliography

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: Eyre and Strahan, 1808-12), III (1808), no. 3477.

Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani: A Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1972), p. 162.

Cyril Ernest Wright, 'Manuscripts of Italian Provenance in the Harleian Collection in the British Museum: Their Sources, Associations and Channels of Acquisition', in Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance. Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. by C. H. Clough (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), pp. 462-84 (p. 467).